Back when it was new, Windows XP was the worst thing imaginable—ask Ars readers.

It wasn't meant to be this way. Windows XP, now no longer supported, wasn't meant to be popular. For all its popularity and sustained usage, people seem to have forgotten something important about it: it sucked.

The Ars forums are a place for geeks to hang out and chat about tech, and especially in light of the hostility shown toward Windows 8, we thought it might be fun to take a look at how our forum dwellers reacted when first introduced to Microsoft's ancient operating system.

The biggest problem with Windows XP was that it was Microsoft's first operating system to feature Product Activation, the licensing system that tied product keys to hardware fingerprints. Gone were the days of buying one copy of the software and installing it on multiple machines. With Windows XP, every system would need its own copy.

When the first news of activation broke, in January 2001, the response from the enthusiasts of the Ars forums was immediate—and broadly negative. The decision to lock down Whistler, as it was then known, was decried as evil.

The consequences of the Product Activation decision were to be many and varied. First of all, it meant that nobody would upgrade to Windows XP. Digitali said that he would be "staying with Win2K." madmanX was similarly "perfectly happy with win2k pro."

Others had even more exotic plans. Claiming that Microsoft had "officially gone too far," mav.rc wasn't going to put up with it, even if it meant having to switch to Linux, BeOS—remember BeOS?—or even, "(gasp!)," buying a Mac.

"Microsoft will learn this lesson or live to regret it."

Lawsuits were expected, and the burden on Microsoft of supporting online activation was argued to be immense, with activation expected to knock down core network infrastructure due to the loads it would create. Jeremy Reimer (then going by the moniker Lord Baldrick) expected a "huge" backlash, betting that Microsoft would back down in the long run.

Some of the claims were remarkably prescient, just not in the way their posters expected. Painless suggested that "one of these days people won't upgrade any more." This turned out to be somewhat accurate... it's just that it's Windows XP, Product Activation and all, that they'd stick with.

Another notable prediction came from amani, who said that Microsoft would simply force people to upgrade by "refusing to support older versions of Windows." What we've learned since then is that even cutting support doesn't, in fact, force people to upgrade. That's precisely the problem Microsoft is now facing.

Enlarge/ This is what Windows XP actually looks like for those who, like myself, are fortunate enough not to have seen it for many years.

Product Activation wasn't the only thing Windows XP had going against it. It was, in the view of many people, monumentally ugly. The bright colors of the "Luna" interface led to it being swiftly labeled a "Fisher-Price" or "Teletubby" operating system.

"It looks like a Fisher Price toy" wrote Spinlock. tmf2 was no fan either. "I dislike the Fisher-Price desktop scheme named Luna or Lunatic, something like that." Kosmo defended the use of the Fisher-Price description as it was a "brilliant reference to [Windows XP]'s candy-assed GUI."

Even before Windows XP was launched, the operating system's defenders in the Battlefront were tired of the Fisher-Price label, but it continued unabated. Even longtime Windows fans like, er, myself were displeased with the bulging, pseudo-3D design that Windows XP introduced.

It's an enduring criticism, and yet, it's one that apparently had no resonance with the broader consumer market. PC users flocked to Windows XP in droves, and not only were they not turned off by the Luna theme, many of them actually appeared to like it. Subsequent operating systems wouldn't stick with Luna, with Windows Vista and 7 both going for something arguably even more over the top with fakery, albeit less colorful, with the Aero Glass theme. Plainly, it wasn't actually a problem for Windows XP's adoption.

It did, however, keep me on Windows 2000 until that was no longer tenable.

Traditional problems

A Windows release wouldn't be a Windows release without worries about compatibility, and Windows XP had a harder time than most in this regard. It was the destination not just for Windows 2000 and NT 4 users, but also many millions of people migrating away from Windows 98 and its legacy of DOS compatibility. Even a year after release, Windows 98 SE was recommended as the platform to go for if you were a gamer.

To this day, there are still people clinging on to Windows 98, even going so far as to produce new drivers for the ancient operating system in a bid to let modern software run on it (though that project appears to be largely abandoned now, having received its last code change in 2013).

On top of all these, there were those who didn't want Windows XP to succeed for reasons that are best described as absurd. Self-styled security expert Steve Gibson proclaimed that Windows XP would somehow bring about the end of the Internet, thanks to its integrated support for raw sockets.

Raw sockets allow app developers to send network traffic that either spoofs its origin, making it harder to trace back to the source, or is malformed in particular ways, which can be useful in provoking bugs. Gibson felt that equipping a consumer operating system with such a capability was dangerously irresponsible (quietly failing to mention that there was already Windows 98 malware that took advantage of raw sockets simply by bundling suitable drivers).

Surprisingly, the normally divided forum community was unanimous in its rejection of the raw sockets brouhaha, with Flying Jelly Attack Confectionery writing "I am no fan of MS, but I think he is taking this a little too far."

Windows XP was released, and the end of the Internet didn't actually happen. Evidence that Windows XP's raw socket access was harmful was notable only by its absence. For no particularly good reason, Microsoft did restrict raw sockets in Service Pack 2 in a number of ways, a move that inconvenienced software (such as excellent port-scanning tool nmap) that legitimately used raw sockets. It did literally nothing to hinder malicious software.

It all just goes to show, a lot of the things that might worry nerds and Ars readers may not be such a big deal for the computer-using public.

I still prefer the flat grey theme from Win2K over the XP 'Fisher Price My First Start Bar' that was the default theme of WinXP back in the day. Never had a problem with the underpinnings in the era of 32-bit x86 CPUs, and appreciated the improved DirectX support, but ditched XP the day I went x86_64....

It's not so much that people love XP, it's that they have it installed and it's working and they don't want to go through the heartburn of installing Windows from scratch with the attendant reinstalls of all the software, and the problems with installers that won't run because they don't recognize the newer versions of Windows, trying (and usually failing) to get new installers without having to buy the software all over again, dealing with software that isn't being sold anymore so you can't get new installers...

As for Luna, it only appeared to be accepted. What actually happened is that users took one look at it and flipped back to the classic appearance and forgot Luna even existed. As for Aero Glass, it may be fancier but at least it's more subdued-looking than Luna was and more professional-looking than Metro (or Modern or whatever MS is calling it now). And it's pretty much required, I tried the classic appearance in Win7 and while Windows itself has no problem with it many programs which try to force an Aero-like appearance (eg. MS Office, c'mon guys, how hard it is to follow the system theme like everybody else?) have problems with the window frame if you aren't using Aero.

What keeps people with XP is it Just Works. Microsoft made themselves partially obsolete in the OS sphere by making an OS that nobody needs a new one of, because their old one mostly doesn't crash. For home users, it's not worth spending money for Win7 or 8 on an old machine, and for enterprise users, it's not worth spending the money on business-wide support for when things go Horribly Wrong (either with the upgrade itself or with a bunch of legacy apps).

That's why Windows 9 will have so much trouble (Windows 8 is presumably its Vista or ME, so it doesn't count) when they come out with it: Windows 7 is even more stable than XP, to the point where I can't really imagine ever needing anything else. Especially now that I've finally figured out where they hid most of the stuff in 7.

And now I am on windows 8, love its under the hood tweaks but not keen on its schizophrenic touch first guess how it works interface.

I have a new laptop arriving tomorrow. First thing I'm doing is doing a clean install of seven. Though eight has some nice under the hood tweaks, and can be made usable with classic shell, it's just not worth all the tweaking it takes to make it useful to me.

Oh, it was. I was in college at the time and one of my fellow students wrote "Windows Xtra Problems" on a chalkboard a day or two after release. There was a strong feeling that if one wasn't going to run a proper Linux, one should at least stick with tried-and-true Windows 98SE.

This was not helped by OEMs shipping low-end WinXP computers with only 128MB of RAM, which even with XP Gold was barely enough to run the operating system by itself.

I remember the horror of my friends slowly switching over to XP. All Counter-Strike games had to be hosted from my Windows 98 computer as at the time we were completely unable to get any of the XP "upgraded" machines (or that sad sad ME system in the corner) to host it stably once more than three people connected. In fact, at the time, many of us were convinced that ME only ever existed in some sort of attempt to make XP seem less heinous, which it (barely) succeeded at.

Product activation was, and continues to be, a major PITA. Speaking as someone who's had to re-install more than his fair share of XP over the years.. the amount of time wasted by product activation is saddening.

BTW:I wonder what happens now, since XP is unsupported? What happens if you want to activate a copy of XP?

I remember it was considered fat and bloated, too. But I was looking forward to it because I (a consumer-class user) would finally get off DOS and onto NT in a friendly fashion. NT! The rival to OS/2! A real operating system!

And I think I gave up on BeOS by that point, which made me a sad panda.

Thinking about it now, I also remember my dad yelling at me for going through Walmart, Best Buy, and other stores and converting the desktop theme back to Classic (just like I did with any XP computer I used personally) because he argued it would confuse the people trying it out into thinking it actually looked like that.

Never disliked XP. I enjoyed 95. I enjoyed 98. I skipped ME and 2K. When XP came out I immediately upgraded and enjoyed it. I waited for SP1 before I upgraded to Vista because of the driver support problems. And I really enjoyed Vista. Windows 7 was a no brainer upgrade that I pre-ordered.

The only OS that I hated both before and after release was Windows 8. The UI changes are just too radical and they go against my workflow. Like that xkcd comic, I like using spacebar to overheat my CPU.

Geeks love new technology. They also love to predict the doom of the future. And they love to hate technology. Change is both easy, and very very hard.

Lets go back even further to when Windows 95 came out. If you guys think people hate Windows 8, you haven't seen anything. I wish I had some old FIDOnet forums archived from that era. People were losing their shit over Windows 95, predicting the end of the personal computer, etc.

What I've learned is that in nerd zealot wars, most of the people are up to their eyeballs in BS. I'd put money on at least 50% of the people here who claim "I don't run Windows 8 and never will!" probably are running Windows 8 and are looking for "hardcore nerd cred".

Me? I'm loud and proud, I love Windows 8 (especially 8.1). Just like I loved 95, and XP, and Vista (yeah, I loved Vista, sue me) and Windows 7.

I loved WindowsXP when it came out - I was escaping WindowsME, which is singularly the worst OS I have ever had to use. Sure, XP has issues (my very old printer took a bath) but the fact that practically every Windows application you can buy now still works reasonably well, tells you something about this venerable OS.

I am on Mac now,and iOS, well into the Apple eco system. But XP for me will always be the first OS that I felt I could really count on. It was stable, customizable, pretty fast (if you had RAM to spare) and scaled amazingly well with improving technology. A top end PC now is as far removed from one in 2001, as the iPad is from the Newton - but it still installable on just about anything. Amazing.

I've been using XP in some capacity pretty much continually since 2002 (as part of a dual boot, on work machines, etc) and I have never stopped hating the default aesthetic. The first thing I did on every fresh install was to switch over to the Windows 95 interface. So yeah, hate for the "Fisher-Price look" lives on.

Product activation was, and continues to be, a major PITA. Speaking as someone who's had to re-install more than his fair share of XP over the years.. the amount of time wasted by product activation is saddening.

BTW:I wonder what happens now, since XP is unsupported? What happens if you want to activate a copy of XP?

The MS activation servers will keep running, at least for the foreseeable future.

I stuck with Win2k until the hardware I bought in 2005 wouldn't run it. It had a SATA controller 2k didn't recognise, and wanted me to insert the "driver floppy", and of course, the machine didn't have a floppy drive. I was unfortunately forced to use XP from 2005 until 2007 when I upgraded to Vista. With all the online Vista hate, I was surprised by how much better than XP it was. Like a breath of fresh air.

Be buggered. XP was the slowest OS MS ever released. It was unresponsive and insecure. It was more insecure than Win2k because of retarded decisions like including the malware magnet uPnP open to the world.

At one point, the average time it took for an unpatched XP machine to be pwned once online was 4 minutes, way quicker than it could be patched. It did not "Just Work".

XP Media Center Edition really mastered the revised style of XP with the Royale/Royale Noir themes. Square buttons, non-sunken titlebars, better color schemes. Set your titlebar to 21px and it was a winner all around. Eventually, you could download and install Royale on XP, and it was the first thing I would usually do after a clean install.

I still mentally associate XP with shit. I don't really know when it came to be considered a good OS and I have no idea what it did to earn it.

I'm guessing it was due to the Longhorn delays and broken promises. Jaded fuckwits decided they would hate the next version of Windows no matter what, and they did. I think "XP is better than Longhorn/Vista" morphed into "XP is good" in people's heads.

Lets go back even further to when Windows 95 came out. If you guys think people hate Windows 8, you haven't seen anything. I wish I had some old FIDOnet forums archived from that era. People were losing their shit over Windows 95, predicting the end of the personal computer, etc.

What I've learned is that in nerd zealot wars, most of the people are up to their eyeballs in BS. I'd put money on at least 50% of the people here who claim "I don't run Windows 8 and never will!" probably are running Windows 8 and are looking for "hardcore nerd cred".

Me? I'm loud and proud, I love Windows 8 (especially 8.1). Just like I loved 95, and XP, and Vista (yeah, I loved Vista, sue me) and Windows 7.

I worked for a computer service company when Win 95 came out. The biggest problem I remember was that Microsoft undersold the system requirements (sound familiar?). I spent all day telling people, "No, you really need a 486 with 4mb of RAM to run Win 95 acceptably. Only have 2mb, that'll be $200 for the upgrade. Only have a 386, you're probably better off getting a new machine."

As far as Win XP goes, it was OK. I was a Win 2K holdout for a long time, and because of product activation XP was the first OS I actually paid for. Before that we just shared with our friends.

Yup, pretty much the same with Windows 8. I am now seeing quite a few people who initially blasted W8 slowly warming up to W8 (even before the latest update) once they started actually using it rather than just hearing about it in the tech media, which tend to cater to the hipster crowd and favor Apple and Google over Microsoft.

Just going with the Ars comments here, when W8 was first introduced, 70+% of commenters were heavily against W8. I remember vividly because my comments defending W8 were always heavily downvoted. Now I would say it's more like 40% or less. It seems many people have changed their mind once they started using it for more than a few minutes. I don't think they switched to really LOVE W8, but rather just came to realization that all the big fuss about dual personality thing of W8 was way overblown (and still is, thanks to the media).

I still mentally associate XP with shit. I don't really know when it came to be considered a good OS and I have no idea what it did to earn it.

I'm guessing it was due to the Longhorn delays and broken promises. Jaded fuckwits decided they would hate the next version of Windows no matter what, and they did. I think "XP is better than Longhorn/Vista" morphed into "XP is good" in people's heads.

Those jaded fuckwits were probably the same people telling us how secure Linux was. I don't like to gloat, but just this once I'll make an exception :-)